amazing story

Naomi Britton: Faith Beyond Fire Insurance

By Billy EkofoThe 700 Club

“I was in the kitchen with my mom, and my dad came in, and they picked me up; Mom was on one side and Dad was on the other, and then they gave me a Naomi sandwich. I just felt so loved. I felt like I was the center of their world. I felt secure and safe. It’s the best feeling; it’s the best feeling in the whole wide world.”

Those feelings became just a memory for Naomi Britton. Her parents divorced when she was five-years-old.

“We were in the car, and we were backing up from the house, and I look out the window and it’s our house, and we’re leaving, and we have all this stuff in the car, and I remember thinking, “Something is not right; there’s something wrong here.”

Her mom remarried, and Naomi lived with her and her stepfather. A few years later she attended a church service and learned about Jesus Christ for the first time.

“And the speaker on Sunday, he said, ‘if you don’t want to go to hell, then you need to accept Jesus.’ I was 12-years-old. I remember thinking, ‘Gosh! I don’t want to go to hell!’ So I ran down and I accepted Jesus, and I felt like, that was that, you know? I didn’t realize, or take in anything beyond that, kind of like a fire insurance type of thing.”

Even though Naomi accepted Christ as her Savior, she didn’t understand what it meant to turn her life fully over to Him. This included her dating relationships.

“About the end of high school, we were intimate and I got pregnant. That was something that scared the living daylight out of me. Just knowing my parents didn’t really see that side of me; they didn’t really know that that was the type of person that I was or the type of lifestyle I was living. So it was really out of fear that I didn’t want to have the baby. I felt a little bit of selfishness because I didn’t want to give up my future.”

Naomi secrectly ended her pregnancy. Soon, feelings of guilt overwhelmed her. She cut herself off from family and close friends, and immersed herself into a lifestyle of partying and drinking.

“I didn’t want anymore relationships. I was sick of that. So, I just got into the drinking and partying, really trying to have that feeling of power and control over the decisions and choices that I made, and I felt like for some reason, that was going to do it for me.”

One morning after a night of heavy partying Naomi came face to face with what her life had become.

“I still had make-up and hairspray and everything going on, and I just remember looking at the mirror in my dorm room; and I remember just seeing this skeleton looking back at me - not my face as it is now, but like sunken in and dark circles under my eyes. I remember just being horrified of what I saw.”

“I felt like God was telling me, ‘You are at a crossroad! It’s either the life that you’re living, which leads to death, or turn your life around and choose me!’”

That day, Naomi chose God. She remembered the decision to accept Christ she’d made years before as a child. This time she turned her entire life over to Him, especially her feelings of guilt from the abortion. Today, she is happily married to Joshua, and wants to share her story with anyone bound by sin and shame.

“If it weren’t for grace, I wouldn’t be standing here talking in front of you . Anybody that can understand the feeling of taking someone else’s life, but then God coming in and say, ‘If you accept me, I’ll give you back your life, I’ll forgive you, I’ll cast that as far away as the east is from the west.’ And that feeling of every morning you can wake up and know you’re free from that bondage - the grace is sufficient for every person who is willing to do that, to accept Him, it’s incredible!”